


Thirteen Views of a Labyrinth

by raspberryhunter



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Algorithms, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Misses Clause Challenge, Ratings: PG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are not so very different, Ariadne and Pasiphaë, Icarus and Daedalus, Ariadne and Icarus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirteen Views of a Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emilyenrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/gifts).



> emilyenrose, I had never thought about Icarus and Ariadne growing up together until I read your prompt, and then... I couldn't let go of the idea! I hope you like it.
> 
> Many, many thanks to my betas, elementals (for lovely wordsmithing), ricardienne (for Classics beta-ing, pointing me to Ovid and Catullus so I could draw details from them and then summarily ignore them, and patiently and awesomely answering all my totally random questions about red dye and embroidery), and sprocket (for multiple-draft structure-fixing and not letting me get away with anything)!

**1\. The Palace**

Even years later, Icarus remembered being presented to Ariadne as if it were yesterday. He was six, and Ariadne was not much older, but he was worried and jittery, while she already possessed a grave composure that he attempted to match and failed. 

His clothes were itchy and uncomfortable. His empty hands twitched, wanting wood in them, or stone: something honest and real. His father looked even more worried than Icarus felt, but Icarus consoled himself by remembering that Daedalus always looked nervous.

They were presenting the latest of the Athenian tributes. Icarus knew the story: when the King’s son had been killed in Athens, the King’s justice had demanded in return tributes from Athens to be sent three times a year for the Minotaur. Icarus had never seen a tribute before; Daedalus had not allowed it. The leader of these tributes got out a few curses against Minos -- "Killer of the innocent! Father of a monster!" -- before a soldier cuffed him into silence.

He looked out the window, squinting against the sun, to the dark mass of the Labyrinth beyond the palace. He wished he were back in his father’s workshop, back with his tools, things he understood. He glanced down at the blue and white tiles tesselating the floor. Perhaps, before Minos escorted them back through the Labyrinth, he could find some of the tiles to take back.

The King's head turned, and he shivered. He had seen the King before, of course, but never with the full attention of the King fixed upon him. The son of Zeus, they said he was, and he could believe it; the King was no larger than a common man, with jet-black hair and beard, but his eyes burned. He glanced at the Queen seated by her husband, a stray sunbeam lighting up her golden hair. Her smooth face was beautiful and distant, her gaze searing through him, her attention on something far beyond him. 

"My King," his father said to Minos, and again, bowing to Pasiphaë: "My Queen." Daedalus had sworn oaths to both of them, in the days before Icarus had been born, when the craftsman had first come to Crete. But Icarus was to be presented to Ariadne. A symbol, Daedalus had said to his son. "You will pledge to the house of Minos in the rising generation, to the child closest in age to you. A symbol that Minos' line will endure; so we have told him."

Icarus didn't understand his father's words or what lay behind them, not then. He only knew that he would not have to speak to the King. He looked at Ariadne, surrounded as she was on all sides: with the King and Queen and the rest of the royal family behind her, Icarus and Daedalus in front of her, the tributes to one side, and the window overlooking the Labyrinth to the other side of her. He stammered out the oath, his father prompting him every two words or so.

"I accept your oath," Ariadne said clearly, without having to be prompted. The King smiled. 

**2\. The Entrance to the Labyrinth**

Left, left again, another left: Ariadne counted out the turnings as if it were a dance, a spiral dance taking her to the center of the Labyrinth, the carved stone walls of the Labyrinth smooth against her hand. Light seeped in from the mossy chinks where the stone met the wooden roof, always dimly lighting her way to the next turning, the next corridor. 

She saw a glow at the end of the passage, and she quickened her steps. Perhaps she was finally at the center of the Labyrinth; perhaps she had found where her parents’ craftsman and his son lived. Perhaps she would again see the odd dark boy who had sworn to her two years ago.

_And the King ordered the craftsman to build the Labyrinth to hide away the monster born to the Queen and the bull from the sea, the monster that fed only on the human flesh of youths and tore apart his victims with his bare hands, for he did not dare kill the result of the justice of the gods. And to punish the craftsman for helping the Queen, he compelled him to hide himself in the Labyrinth as well._

The story was clear: Daedalus must live inside the Labyrinth, and if he lived there, so must his son. They had looked _interesting_ , and she wanted to find them, and she thought she had finally figured out the solution to the maze.

But as she went around the corner, she realized the light she was seeing was the glare of sunlight from the entrance: she was right back at the beginning. She scowled. She had thought that this would be the answer. She had thought that this was the right way to go, that always following the left edge of the Labyrinth would take her to the center. 

All right, what had happened? She crouched and drew diagrams in the dirt of the floor of the Labyrinth with her finger, small mazes. These examples worked; so what had gone astray? She stood up again, stretched, idly drew loops in the dirt with her toes around one of the small mazes she'd drawn.

...Ah. When there was a loop, the strategy of following the left edge would simply take her to the beginning of the loop. So that wasn't the answer. 

She frowned at the dirt, crouched down again. She drew a branching, another branching. Thoughtfully, she connected two of the branches. Another loop. How to go through all the possibilities without missing any?

Suppose she had a thread. A very long thread. She could search each branch. And if she met the thread again -- she would know it was a loop.

Would that be enough to search all the possibilities exhaustively until she found the right one? She riffled through examples and possibilities in her head. Yes. She had been wrong before, but this time she was right, she was sure of it.

Ariadne jumped up, twirled around in joy, and ran towards her rooms. She hated weaving, and tried to avoid it at every opportunity, but today her nurse would find her strangely docile. She would weave for hours if she had to, as long as she was able to escape at the end with a thread long enough to find her way through the maze. 

**3\. The Scientist's Tower**

Icarus fidgeted as his father considered the equilateral triangle he had made. He knew the construction was correct; the only question was how precise it was. Daedalus, considering it closely, suddenly went still, his head tilted. "Wait."

Icarus waited alertly for Daedalus, whose hearing was better than his, to tell him more. The King had visited recently, so it was most likely not him. It was probably only that the Minotaur was wandering about the Labyrinth again. He hoped. 

Daedalus frowned. “It’s not the Minotaur I hear, and it’s not the King. Who--“

And then around the corner peered not the Minotaur, but a girl, with a rust-colored thread in her hand. Icarus' breath caught as he recognized the princess Ariadne: the last person he would have expected to see deep within the Labyrinth. Her eyes widened as she took in their workshop: the pieces of wood and stone in various stages of fabrication; the gleaming tools laid out in neat rows, Icarus himself cross-legged on the ground with his compass and straightedge in front of him. She gave him a nod of recognition.

Daedalus, frozen for only an instant, yelled, "You idiot girl! Did you think at all? What if you had met the Minotaur?"

Ariadne narrowed her eyes. "I'm not afraid," she said, her chin stuck out mulishly.

"You should be!" Daedalus shouted. 

"Father, he's perfectly --" Icarus started to interject. Daedalus gave him a quelling look and turned back to Ariadne. "As long as you're here, sit down. We're going over some math. Geometry."

Ariadne's eyes grew round, this time, Icarus could tell, with longing. He understood. Math was his second favorite thing to do, after building, and he didn't think that anyone at the palace got to learn it, not the way Daedalus taught him, not even if they were princes or princesses.

Icarus whispered to Ariadne, "Don't worry about Father yelling. He does that when he's worried. It doesn't mean he's mad at you."

She smiled at him. Icarus smiled back.

**4\. The Minotaur's Lair**

"Come on," Icarus said, pulling Ariadne by the hand. "He's really quite gentle to people he knows," Icarus said. "Me. Father. If you don't have the scent of hemlock on you, he'll probably ignore you, honestly, if that's what you want."

Ariadne had thought that the secret of the Labyrinth was how to find one’s way in it, but there was yet another secret underneath. Icarus had told her, after months of pestering her to visit the monster, that the Minotaur did not tear the tributes apart with his bare hands. That was a story put about by Minos. The tributes were killed by Minos' soldiers, either by hemlock or by the sword if they resisted the hemlock, and Daedalus had devised a contraption to carry the bodies through the Labyrinth to the Minotaur's lair. 

And the deepest secret of all was that the Minotaur did not require the flesh of youths, living or otherwise. Minos did not need the tributes at all to feed the Minotaur. Any dead, from battle or sickness or old age, would do. But the tributes were given to the Minotaur anyway.

"He does eat human bodies," Icarus had said. "That part is true, we've tried to feed him on other things, and he tries, he does try, but it's not his natural food. The gods are cruel."

"Wait," Ariadne had said incredulously, "you feel sorry for him for eating people?"

"It's not his fault," Icarus had snapped. "And, well -- he's younger than we are, you know. That's middle-aged in bull-years, of course, but he's not a bull, you'll see."

They had come to a branching of the corridors. The walls in the passage Icarus chose looked more hastily constructed than the smooth lines she had seen elsewhere of the Labyrinth. There were dark streaks on the walls that could be variations in the stone, or could be stains. They rounded a curve, and Ariadne stopped walking suddenly, her heart thumping.

"Little bull," Icarus crooned. But the Minotaur was neither little nor a bull; he was monstrous, unnatural, the head of a bull on the body of a man; but the head was more intelligent than the bulls she had seen in her father's pens, and the body was hairier than her father's or her brothers'. The Minotaur's hands, opening and closing spasmodically, were large and strong, and could tear her apart, regardless of Icarus' words. Ariadne, despite herself, was frightened.

The Minotaur made a soft sound. It sounded a little like an animal snort, and a little like the questioning noises of a baby. And Ariadne suddenly felt a rush of fellow-feeling for this child of two worlds, his whole life constrained and directed by others, penned in by the walls around him; what others thought about him not who he really was.

Icarus was watching her, a little nervously. "It's fine. It's just his way of asking who you are." He said to the monster, "Little bull, this is the Princess Ariadne."

She straightened her spine. She met the Minotaur's eyes.

"Brother," she said.

**5\. The Corridor**

Ariadne had discovered the longer corridors of the Labyrinth were excellent for rolling balls. Some were crooked, some straight; and either way the Minotaur was fascinated by the paths they took, and could chase them for hours while Icarus and Ariadne talked.

She was pensive today, tossing the ball listlessly short distances until the Minotaur whined in protest. Icarus, scooping up the ball, rolled it all the way down the long straight corridor they were in, and the Minotaur trotted off happily to retrieve it. While he was gone, Icarus took the opportunity to try to extricate Ariadne from the web of her thoughts. "So. Father's been teaching us about proportions lately; do you have any thoughts on this?"

Ariadne gave him a wry smile. She, of course, knew exactly what he was doing, but would let him proceed. "I did have a thought last night. Let me show you that you can never get to anywhere you go."

Icarus was the superior engineer, the better craftsman. Neither of them ever questioned that. But there was a wild brilliance to Ariadne's thought that he could not always follow. "I don't even know what that means. Show me."

Ariadne paused -- "All right, little bull, here's your ball, and I'll run with you this time --" and ran to the end of the corridor. The Minotaur picked up the ball and threw it himself to the opposite end. "Icarus, if you want to come to where I am, you must first come halfway." Icarus folded his hands as the Minotaur ran past him, snorting. "Ah, come on," Ariadne wheedled. Icarus' mouth twitched. "All right." He walked to the halfway point. "Now come another half--" Icarus glanced back at the Minotaur, who was batting the ball between his hands. He took several more steps. "And half of that, and half of that --" 

"Ah," Icarus said, "I see. There's always some distance left. And yet I can reach you." He demonstrated, touching her hand with his.

Ariadne nodded, grinning. "I think the answer is that the time it takes to travel the distance also gets halved, and what seems infinite is merely finite." She glanced down at their touching fingers and then away, dropping Icarus' hand. "They're talking about marrying me off," she said. "Not yet, not quite, my nurse says I still have two years at least until my courses come and they start seriously making arrangements. But -- it's odd, thinking of my whole future being decided."

He nodded. He could see that this was what had been troubling her. And he thought: his life was bounded by the walls of the Labyrinth, was circumscribed by the palace. He was the slave of the King, who could have his head with a careless word; and yet he would be able to decide whom he wished to marry. He said none of this. She knew it already.

She said, betraying a slight hint of anxiousness, "You'll come with me to whatever land I go to, when I marry, when I become Queen, to be my chief craftsman. Like your father is for my mother."

"Yes," Icarus replied, surprised she would even ask; "of course."

The Minotaur trotted up to Icarus with the ball in his hands. And Icarus thought: if Ariadne married, and Icarus came with her, the Minotaur could not follow. And he felt a frisson of fear, a tiny misgiving, as small as a hole in a seashell only large enough for an ant, carrying a thread.

**6\. Deeper In**

It had been Icarus' idea to make a toy for the Minotaur, something he could play with when neither Icarus nor Ariadne was around. "Which is most of the time," Icarus pointed out. "I must help my father with his projects for your parents, and now that they're seriously starting to think about your marriage arrangements, you have far more duties. It must get awfully lonely for him when we're the only people who visit him."

Ariadne thought about it and then wished she hadn't. "Yes. I wish Mother --"

Icarus waited.

She shook her head. On the rare occasions she saw her mother, mostly formal events, they talked of Ariadne’s marriage arrangements, of her weaving and dancing; but Ariadne had never heard Pasiphaë so much as mention the Minotaur’s name. Their mother would never set foot in the Labyrinth. It was not worth thinking about. "Nothing. What did you have in mind?"

*

Ariadne designed the toy. She thought about it constantly: at night, during her dancing, while she was weaving. Her nurse scowled at her mistakes at the loom, but she didn't care; the toy was going to be marvelous.

Interlocking parts, balls that slid within the design -- she was very proud of the design when she finished. Icarus' reaction when she showed him, on the other hand, was not at all what she had wished. "We're supposed to build _that_? Okay, how is that piece going to be engineered, the one that's supposed to have a hole there? It will be hard to bore a hole there, and if I make it in two pieces, it'll be a stress point, it will break there the first time he throws it, which will probably be approximately two seconds after he gets it."

"Could you move the location of the hole here instead?”  
"I don’t think --" Icarus paused. "Well. Okay. That might work, if we make this part a little bigger so that the ball doesn't escape." Ariadne considered; finally nodded. "Now here, though; you can't be serious about this --"

It was like a dance, like feeling the beat of her drumming heels in the dancing-ground Daedalus had made her, only better, because it was with another person, because it was two minds dancing together.

It took several iterations to untangle the design of the piece into something that both of them were happy with, something both of them were excited to construct and bring to the Minotaur. The final toy was made of hard wood, with small metal balls rolling in and out of cunning holes carved in the wood, in such a way that the balls were always contained within the wood structure. (Icarus had sternly rejected Ariadne's idea of balls that could move freely both within and without the toy; having small metal balls rolling around the dimness of the Labyrinth, he had pointed out, was a good way for all of them to break their necks.)

Ariadne put the toy in the Minotaur’s hands and stepped back. The Minotaur made the noise she had come to learn meant curiosity, and he turned it in his hands. His head tilted; clumsy fingers reached to poke the balls. The Minotaur's eyes widened, and he flung his arms about in a way that Ariadne knew meant he was happy.

And the toy flew out of his hand and against the wall, hitting the stone with an audible crack and bouncing off. Ariadne held her breath. The Minotaur went to investigate, picking it up, shaking it.

It was whole. The joints had held. The Minotaur began to make a snorting noise: he was laughing. Ariadne laughed with him.

**7\. The Center**

In the days when Pasiphaë had still had power, Daedalus had sworn to both King and Queen, but he was her man; he had built the bull for her. Sometimes she felt sorry for him, for the web of politics she had mired him in when all he wanted to do was build and create, make puzzles and solve puzzles, but mostly she felt blank. And, really, he had mired himself by coming here, when he had asked Minos and Pasiphaë to protect him from the justice of gods and men after the accident to his nephew. 

All of their lives, she sometimes thought, were spent simply trying to escape from the gods' justice.

And yet he had sworn to her, and she was responsible for him. "Why now?" she asked, looking out the window. Through the clear air, the roof of the Labyrinth was clearly visible, but nothing that was within. She closed her eyes against it. Minos had, of course, assigned her this room and this view. "Why do you want to escape Crete now?" 

"The King is getting worse," answered Daedalus. "He is more cruel to the tributes than he once was. His last visit to my workshop -- he broke two of my projects, one of my son's -- and he threatened to destroy the Labyrinth, raze it to the ground. I cannot stay here."

She could have laughed. Minos exiling Daedalus to the Labyrinth had not moved the craftsman; neither had preparing the tributes for the Minotaur, year after year. But when his work was threatened -- ah, that was another matter. She swung to face Daedalus. "Your son is not sworn to Minos, as I advised. He will honor that. But you -- you are sworn to him. He will hunt you down."

"Nevertheless, you promised to help me when I asked. Your counsel, O Queen."

Pasiphaë inclined her head. And so, finally, events would be set in motion to end what had begun so many years ago, with the bull from the sea. "I can do nothing about the sea blockade. You will not be able to escape by sea. You will have to find another way. The air, perhaps; some kind of device for gliding?"

Daedalus looked startled; Pasiphaë could almost see his mind working. "Yes. Yes, I had not thought -- yes. But when the King inspects my workshop, and finds --"

She raised a hand, and he stopped talking. "Tell Minos that Ariadne has found her way to you, as you told me. He will trust you a little more, for having told him. And he will not watch you as closely. Coupled with the latest Athenian tribute about to arrive, he will be distracted. You will have enough time to prepare to escape, if you work quickly."

"But Ariadne -- Do you mean, betray her to Minos --"

She raised a perfect eyebrow at him. "Isn't that what you wanted me to say?"

Daedalus had told her of the structures the children were building, how Ariadne at her young age had designed a trinket that might be pushing the limits of his own design capability. _A toy_ , he had all but spat. _For the monster. All that effort, just for a toy._ His jealousy was plain, the same jealousy that had led to the moment of anger in which his nephew had died.

 _So am I jealous,_ she thought. _Jealous of Ariadne's youth, of her freedom, that she has not yet been trapped by time and gods and men. Are we ever not jealous of our children?_

"Ariadne," Daedalus insisted stubbornly. "I must know she will be all right."

"Why, Daedalus," said Pasiphaë, surprised, "do you then care for the girl?"

"I am not perfect," Daedalus said stiffly, "and I do make errors in judgement. But I prefer to think that I can learn from my mistakes. And Minos is more cruel than I. Redeem your promise, O Queen."

 _Thus I am chastised_ , Pasiphaë thought. "I will deal with Ariadne." She sighed. She had thought she was beyond love, had given it up utterly, and perhaps she had; but she would still pay her debts. "As for you and Icarus: go to Cocalus in Sicily." 

So would she repay her servant, and her servant would serve her once again. For Cocalus bore no love to Minos, and when Minos went looking for Daedalus, she rather thought that justice would be done in its turn to the man who had meted out his justice to her, to Daedalus, to the Minotaur.

"My Queen," Daedalus said to her.

**8\. The Labyrinth Without**

Somehow the King had learned of Ariadne's visits to Daedalus. She did not know how; she had thought she had covered her tracks, had not left any sign or clue that would have alerted anyone that she went there.

The King had not said anything about Ariadne visiting his disgraced craftsman. He only regarded her with glittering eyes until she shuddered. But the next time she tried to go to the Labyrinth, there were guards at the entrance who denied her access. And she was too long away from her rooms, her nurse came to find her and bring her back to the loom.

So quickly, she thought, was her freedom shown to be an illusion. So quickly she was shown how little choice she had. 

She thought she might go insane. Her days now were filled with weaving, endless weaving. She could not talk to anyone freely. She had not known how much she valued being able to bounce ideas and mathematics off Icarus until he was gone. She missed Icarus; missed the Minotaur. She heard her nurse telling her sister Phaedra to watch out for the monster in the Labyrinth who tore little girls apart with his bare hands, and she bit her lip until it bled. 

Icarus was not bound by her restrictions. He was to the others in the palace only another servant boy, and he blended in with the other servant boys, going in and out of the Labyrinth with barely a notice by her father's guards. So she was not entirely surprised when she recognized the thin dark youth who offered her a plate of olives, a carafe of wine. As he bent to pour the wine, he said in her ear, "Father is planning to leave Crete. With me. The two of us. He's making wings for us, we're going to fly."

Ariadne's heart stopped for a minute. Of course they would escape this place, of course; she would do the same in an instant if she could. Ariadne did not need him to say that they could not take Ariadne, that Minos would be angry about them leaving, but that his anger would be ten times more if they took his daughter with them, that they would have to be mad to even consider taking her.

Icarus and Daedalus, gone. Icarus, gone.

She thought briefly about asking Icarus to stay -- would he, for her sake? -- but she knew she could not do so. She was responsible for him; she could not ask him to stay to be the brunt of her father's anger when he found Daedalus had fled. She met Icarus' eyes. At the look in his, she knew that he would stay if he could, but he also knew he could not.

She felt walls closing in around her.

**9\. Preparing to Escape**

The wings were almost ready. Almost. Icarus was tired of working with wax. Wax was tricky, changeable, not to be depended on. In his nightmares, Ariadne asked him to stay in the Labyrinth as she had not when he had told her about Daedalus' plans, and at her words, the wax softened and melted, dripped out of his fingers, leaving him with nothing.

And the feathers were hard to keep secret; there was always one or another escaping the large bags they kept them in, a white plume shouting their secret to anyone sufficiently observant. It was extremely fortunate that Minos had not been to their workshop in some time.

And why was that?

"The King is busy with preparations for the Athenians, and he trusts me now more than he did," Daedalus said in response to Icarus' question, although his forehead was lined with worry. "Enough, at least, that he isn't watching us as closely, not when he's expecting to receive the tributes."

There was something about his father's response that made Icarus uneasy. How could the King trust Daedalus? As Icarus bent at his worktable to work another feather into the wax, he was reminded of the last time the King had come in person to inspect his father's workshop. Daedalus had urged Icarus into the dark safety of the Labyrinth, but behind him he had heard the King starting to shout in an almost-impossibly loud voice, followed by noises of glass splintering, stone cracking. For weeks afterwards, Daedalus had been uncharacteristically silent.

He thought about all that had happened since then. He thought of how Daedalus had started working on the wings right after Ariadne –

After the King --

" _You_ told the King about Ariadne," Icarus whispered. "You told him she met with us."

"I did what was best," Daedalus said firmly. "What was best for us, Icarus. I always have done."

"No," said Icarus. Pieces he hadn't even realized he'd thought about were starting to drop into place. The stories he'd heard all his life about how Daedalus first came to Crete snapped sharply into focus. "Father, tell me about Perdix. Tell me why we are here on Crete. Was that -- what was best for him?"

His father's face twisted, and Icarus knew the stories were true. "Son, it wasn't -- wasn't what you think. It was a moment of anger -- an accident, I thought I would be blamed --"

"Like speaking to the King about Ariadne was an accident?" Icarus demanded.

“If you knew what I knew, Icarus, you would have –“ At Icarus’ look, Daedalus fell silent.

What else had his father done, in the service of Minos, in the service of Pasiphaë? He did not know enough. He knew too much. _Killer of the innocent._

“I would never do that to Ariadne, Father. Never.”

He stood up from the workbench. Feathers fluttered to the ground. Normally he would have carefully scooped them up, but instead he walked away from the workshop, into the soothing darkness of the Labyrinth, leaving his father alone.

**10\. The Labyrinth Within**

That evening, she paced around in her rooms, too upset to dance, almost too upset to think.

"What am I going to do?" she said out the window to the roof of the Labyrinth. Of course Icarus could not hear her from within the maze; but it gave her a tiny bit of solace to imagine he could. She did not dare breathe his secret aloud, even to the air, but she said, "I can't stay here. But how?"

"I will show you," said a quiet voice in her ear.

Ariadne turned. "Mother?"

No one ever came to her rooms, least of all her mother, but there she was, standing next to Ariadne as if she came there every evening, her face blandly expressionless and perfectly beautiful as always. Ariadne frantically thought back to try to remember if she had said anything aloud that would implicate either Icarus or Daedalus. Pasiphaë said to her gently, "I know it all. Daedalus is my craftsman, remember."

Ariadne did not weep or throw herself into her mother's arms. Perhaps she would have, if her mother had come to her last year, or in all the years that were past. "I do not forget that, mother. How would you help me, then?"

Her mother watched her closely, but made no move to touch her. Ariadne was glad. "I will tell your father that you are to greet the Athenians when they come, that you are to give them the poisoned bowls. By that time, Daedalus and Icarus will have departed; there will be no reason to deny you the Labyrinth."

Ariadne crossed her arms. "So I will sacrifice the Athenians. This gives me nothing more than I already have, not even the Labyrinth."

"Ah, but then -- there are still those among the palace guards who are my men; I will make sure they leave you alone with the Athenians. So you may talk to them, instead of poisoning them. Help them -- and they have a boat, and are strong, and can outrow Minos' ships."

Ariadne did not understand. Why this, why now? And Ariadne started to see what lay behind the flawless features that admitted neither imperfection nor emotion; and what might wait for her, once she was herself married to a powerful king or god. Weaving, she thought incoherently; Pasiphaë had been weaving since before Ariadne herself had been born. "Come with me," Ariadne said impulsively. "There is nothing for you here."

"It is too late for me," said her mother. "But it is not too late for you, not yet. If you are willing to pay the price to escape."

"Anything," Ariadne promised recklessly. "Anything, to be gone from here. Anything for my freedom."

"Have a care, daughter," her mother said distantly. "I once said the same, that I would give anything for my heart's desire, and the gods heard it. Have a care to what the Athenians will ask of you. Will you indeed give them what they ask? Think well, child, before you decide."

"Anything," repeated Ariadne. Grey eyes looked into grey eyes. Ariadne's face hardened to match Pasiphaë's. "I have already decided."

**11\. The Secret Room**

Icarus was the cautious one, the one who always wanted to build in safety parameters, the one who always had to point out the flaws in Ariadne's plans. He was not entirely sure what he was doing with her in this storage room, well-known among the servant boys for romantic trysts, the darkened room lit only by a torch Ariadne held, their voices in whispers. If anyone had seen him entering the room with the King's daughter, or found them there together, his life would certainly be forfeit.

But it was important. It might be the last time he saw Ariadne before they attempted to escape the Labyrinth. It might be the last time he ever saw her, he thought, looking at her face illuminated by the flickering flame. He could almost convince himself it was one of their meetings in the Labyrinth, only everything was subtly wrong: the torch threw long shadows instead of the dim even lighting he was used to; the walls around him were not the warm dry stone he craved.

And then he started really listening to her words tumbling over each other and what she was proposing. "You can't do that!" Icarus exclaimed. "That will never work --"

"It will work," Ariadne insisted. "We'll pick a place, somewhere on the route between here and Athens. You fly there, I'll go with the Athenians and meet you there."

He had known that Ariadne would follow them if she could, but her plan was insanely complicated. It depended on so many things: that their wings worked, that Minos did not catch them immediately, that Ariadne was able to negotiate with the Athenians, that the Athenians somehow evaded Minos, that Ariadne found a way to convince them to leave her ashore. Yet watching Ariadne's eyes burn, Icarus was reminded forcibly that her father was the son of Zeus, that her mother was the daughter of the sun, and he knew she would succeed.

And Icarus knew that this was the moment of decision for himself as well. If he went along with Ariadne's mad plan, his father could not know, could not ever know, lest she be again betrayed. On one hand, there was Ariadne; and on the other, Daedalus.

But there was never really any choice, was there? There was never any choice for him from the moment he swore to Ariadne, when the two of them were scarcely more than babes.

"Naxos," Icarus said, and his voice didn't -- quite -- break. "I'll wait for you on Naxos."

"I'll find you there," Ariadne said. "I'll find the way. I'll escape from my father, from Theseus. No matter what I have to do, whom I have to go with, what I have to sacrifice." 

Suddenly Icarus knew, in a blinding burst of intuition, exactly what else -- _who_ else -- Ariadne would sacrifice. It had been there to see all along. He did not understand politics, but he was a slave under Minos; he understood power, and he understood what happened to those who had none. He wished he had not seen. He wished he was the kind of person who would stop her; but he would not. _Fourteen Athenians in each tribute._ And he had never done a single thing about it. "You don't have to sacrifice anything," Icarus said very fast, the only thing he could do. "It's not worth it. You can -- study here. Build things here. You don't need me. You know that."

She did not move. Her face, grave and drawn, seemed carved of stone in the shifting light of the torch. She looked like her father. She looked like her mother. She looked like a goddess. Icarus was afraid of her. She said again, "I will find you."

Icarus knew, finally, that he was no better than his father. He was his father's son. He knew why Daedalus built for Minos, and why he built for Pasiphaë. "My Queen," he said.

**12\. The Exit of the Labyrinth**

The eyes of Theseus, leader of the Athenians, lingered on Ariadne, sweeping over her body. She did not care. She was fairly sure she knew what he was after, the price he would ask in addition to her freeing the tributes, and she was willing enough; her maidenhead would have bought her father a kingdom in the usual way of things, and to exchange it for her freedom seemed a better trade.

At her offer, Thesesus calmly said, "No." He leaned casually against the smooth stone of the wall; his smile had just the faintest touch of insolence. "I don't think so. Oh, I am not scorning you, Princess, but I need a tangible symbol that Athens' tributary relations with Minos are broken. I think you know what I need. I think you knew before you started talking to me."

Her heart constricted as she realized she did know. Part of her had known for a long time that it would come to this, had known ever since her mother's warning. But she still had to try. "Your freedom, Athenian, and the freedom of those with you. And a princess. These are no small things."

"And the freedom of all those who come after me?" Theseus asked. "The freedom of my people? This is what I ask for, no less." 

"I'll call the guards," Ariadne said breathlessly, "they'll kill you all right here --"

Theseus shrugged. "I shall take my chances. And then, of course, you won't leave either. And those who come after me may not be inclined to make any bargain at all."

They stared at one another. Ariadne hated him, hated him so much she could hardly breathe. And she understood him, too, which was even worse. The silence stretched out between them.

*

She does not need a thread or anything else to find the Minotaur, not now. The Minotaur comes to her eagerly and sniffs at the bowl she holds. In the bowl is hemlock, enough for five strong men. Her calculations have never been as precise as Icarus’, but she has included a large enough margin of error that she is in no doubt of the outcome. 

The Minotaur knows the scent of the hemlock berries means food. She sets the bowl down, and he laps up the liquid eagerly. And then she waits with him. It is the only thing she can do for him now.

The poison starts to take effect and he sinks down, his legs unable to hold him any longer. She sits, puts his head in her lap, strokes the monstrous forehead. He gazes up at her trustingly, not understanding what is happening. She would have cried if she had any tears left, if her heart had not turned to stone. 

She takes out her ball of thread, ties one end to the Minotaur's wrist, the rusty color dark against the pale skin. She will retrace her steps, paying out the thread as she goes; will give the other end of the thread to Theseus. Theseus will come to cut off the Minotaur's head as a trophy to show the world that he has slain the beast, and no one but the two of them will ever know that the Minotaur was already dead before ever he entered the Labyrinth.

(No one but Ariadne and Icarus will ever know who the Minotaur was, that he had feelings and emotions; that he loved them.)

Ariadne will not lie, not to herself. She is sacrificing the Minotaur for her own sake. If she were to stay here, without Icarus or even Daedalus, the Labyrinth would eventually close around her, the way it has closed around her mother, and after a time she would no longer be able to escape, even in thought. She knows Icarus does not understand. He is a boy and a maker's son. Though he is the person dearest to her, he will never understand what it is to be a king's daughter.

So. The price of keeping her self will be her heart. But it is better than losing both.

Scattered around the Minotaur are a ball, a little pile of blue and white tiles, a complex toy. She gathers them up and puts them in his arms. "I'm sorry, little bull," she whispers. 

**13\. The Labyrinth Behind**

The water is very blue and the sun is very bright as the two winged figures pass Naxos. Icarus notes it carefully, compares to the map in his head. He will wait until they get to the next set of islands before he turns. 

The bag, the only thing he brought from Crete, bangs against his hip. Daedalus asked no questions about it, after weighing it and finding it to be light. He probably imagines there is a lock of hair in it, a ribbon or thread that once belonged to Ariadne, some nostalgic keepsake. But there is nothing Icarus is keeping from Crete except his memories.

Icarus swoops, testing the wings. They are really very well made. Daedalus worries about the wax melting, that Icarus will try to fly too close to the sun, but of course this is not going to happen. Icarus knows his father loves him, but wonders if his father ever saw him or Ariadne, ever really knew who either of them were, to think Icarus would be so careless, or that Ariadne would not plan to follow them.

Ariadne. Ariadne will sacrifice the Minotaur; and Icarus will sacrifice Daedalus, who loves his son. They are not so very different, Icarus and Ariadne, in the end.

Icarus has checked and rechecked the calculations, and he knows he is well within the parameters of safety: he will only be close to the sun for a moment, the crucial moment where the brightness of the sun will blind Daedalus against what he means to do.

His eyes sting with tears. "Goodbye, Father," he whispers, opens the bag, lets the feathers in the bag flutter down to the ocean, where Daedalus will see them and draw his own conclusions. And he soars up away from Daedalus, against the sun, toward Naxos.


End file.
